CNWL in the coming years – our Strategy

Introduction

The NHS is constantly evolving. At CNWL we need to keep pace with this change and ensure that our organisation is adapting to keep people healthy, support our staff, and meet the strategic challenges we face.

To support this, we are updating our current Trust Strategy to help drive us forward over the next five years. Our staff and the people who use our services are important partners in this change and we’re keen that our updated Strategy draws on, and represents, the views and experience of the people it is designed to support.

As we continue to develop and refine the Trust strategy over the coming months, we will be working to ensure that our ambitions and priorities are informed by the views of our people, our wider partners, and the communities we serve.

There will be two phases of consultation:

• A high-level survey: for colleagues and service users to gather views on the most important issues that our strategy needs to address
• Wider testing of a draft strategy with our staff and services users, our system partners and the communities we serve

Throughout February, we are asking our staff and service users to complete a CNWL Trust Strategy 2026. We are asking people to reflect on how our organisation has changed over the last three years, reflect on the key areas we have identified as the building blocks of our strategy, and share their views on any other important issues we will need to address.

The survey findings will be used to test, refine and strengthen our emerging strategy, which we will then share more widely through further engagement.

Have your say on the 2026 Strategy

We are refreshing our Trust Strategy in the context of the change we want to see across our organisation over the next five years. To help shape this work, we are asking our staff, and people who use our services, to complete a short online survey to share your views.

The survey can be found here. Tell us what you want for the future of our organisation and help us to fill gaps you feel we need to address.

The survey will close on 4 March.

What did our last strategy say? (2022-25)

In 2022 our Trust Strategy set a clear ambition for the delivery of excellent care, supporting our people, improving our processes to streamline care, making better use of digital and data, and the need to work more closely with communities and partners.

The strategy focussed on five core principles:

• Excellent care that is safe, high quality and person-centred
• Attracting, including and retaining staff at all levels
• Strong local partnerships to address inequalities and support neighbourhood health
• Simple effective processes
• Digitally enabled, data-driven services

These principles have supported our organisation to evolve and adapt to a changing external environment while keeping the needs of our patients and staff at the heart of everything we do.

As we move into the next five years we are also reflecting on:

• The publication of the NHS 10 Year Plan – which sets three shifts for the NHS: from hospital to community, treatment to prevention, and analogue to digital and drives the creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service
• Ever tighter funding and increasing demand that stretches capacity for many services – meaning that that more radical change is needed just to stand still
• The need for consistent delivery of the basics - money, performance, and quality
• Significant health inequity and inequalities across our communities
• The crucial role of digital technology to improve services and meet users' expectations for better access, experience and outcomes
• Our deepening partnership with other providers of mental health and community care, and wider system partners both through emerging neighbourhood teams

Our vision for our organisation remains that of Wellbeing for Life. We are committed to working in partnership with all who use our services to improve health and wellbeing, and improve quality of life, through high quality healthcare and personal support.

Our new strategy will help us, over the next five years, to set a clear path to providing consistently excellent care for everyone who needs it and supporting our staff to thrive in their roles.

We are inviting you to help design this change and be part of our future. Complete the survey here CNWL Trust Strategy 2026.